Charming. Kind of gay? Feels very modern in a way, and I can see themes surrounding mental illness, ptsd, homosexuality, anti-war sentiments, etc. presented in what was probably seen as a very “60s hippie” way (the government is poisoning our water and our minds and abandoning/gaslighting the young and marginalized people most affected by it). I feel like this is explicitly expressed in the line “nothing ever comes from the drain, it all comes from your mind.” I also think him setting the film entirely in the bathtub wasn’t just an oddity; to me it seems it could invoke a feeling of confinement, or maybe represent the characters’ urges to “cleanse” themselves of whatever plagues them, such as the fear and guilt of homosexuality or participation in a war. Or maybe it’s to emphasize the disconnection between these two characters, who are physically sharing such an usually-intimate and solo space but who can’t form any emotional bonds, with one of them unable to even express basic empathy. I think it would’ve been much more effective with a different choice of music but I could pull a lot from this! Some people might disagree and are distracted by the bathtub imagery that reappears in ‘Shivers,’ but ideologically it felt very much like a precursor of ‘Videodrome’ to me.
Charming. Kind of gay? Feels very modern in a way, and I can see themes surrounding mental illness, ptsd, homosexuality, anti-war sentiments, etc. presented in what was probably seen as a very “60s hippie” way (the government is poisoning our water and our minds and abandoning/gaslighting the young and marginalized people most affected by it). I feel like this is explicitly expressed in the line “nothing ever comes from the drain, it all comes from your mind.” I also think him setting the film entirely in the bathtub wasn’t just an oddity; to me it seems it could invoke a feeling of confinement, or maybe represent the characters’ urges to “cleanse” themselves of whatever plagues them, such as the fear and guilt of homosexuality or participation in a war. Or maybe it’s to emphasize the disconnection between these two characters, who are physically sharing such an usually-intimate and solo space but who can’t form any emotional bonds, with one of them unable to even express basic empathy. I think it would’ve been much more effective with a different choice of music but I could pull a lot from this! Some people might disagree and are distracted by the bathtub imagery that reappears in ‘Shivers,’ but ideologically it felt very much like a precursor of ‘Videodrome’ to me.
